New Year: Personal Commitments and Not Resolutions

The book on 2015 has now come to a close and 2016 is well underway. In 2015, I chose to end out the year by completing a personal 25 days of gratitude challenge. I started to share with my readers, but frankly I thought inundating you with daily gratitude posts would be a bit much.

I assure you I continued on with my project, and learned a lot about what mattered most to me. I also learned that I needed to make some personal commitments to myself this year, so that I can be more grateful for things such as my health and wellness.

Over the last few years, while I have tried to keep “active” and in 2015 in particular I began to run. Yes I ran in six 10 km races and a half marathon last year; my issue was that I never trained consistently and I was not committed to regular activity. This was reflective on the scale and in my ability to recover.

This year I am not falling into the trap of New Year’s Resolutions, instead I am choosing to commit to myself. I am finding personal motivation to commit to health. For me that motivation is the fact that we are preparing to become parents.

As the picture says, the possibilities are endless! 2016 could be the year we become parents.

We are going to be slightly on the ‘older’ side, compared to most new parents. I want to be active to provide our child with role models. I also want to be able to run, play and keep up with a young one. To be honest, I don’t want to be an old overweight Dad on the sidelines.

This is proving to be very strong motivation for me. I am now 4 days into the new year and I have adjusted eating habits and have made sure that I am active for at least 1 hour each day. For me visualization has been helpful. I picture my future child while I’m on the treadmill, and picture myself slim and active. The other personal motivation I have is the fact that I want to look in the mirror and like what I see; more importantly that my mental self-image is congruent with what I see in the mirror.

2016 is going to be an amazing year, but I know I play a major role in that. I need to make it a great year!

My 5 personal commitments for 2016:

I will love myself enough to be healthy and active

I will recover quickly from setbacks

I will stop negative self talk

I will make myself a priority in order to be my best for others

I will keep myself open to new experiences, this is where you find the opportunities for personal growth and the fun!

Notice my commitments this year are to myself and not specific resolutions like, ‘I’m going to lose 20 lbs’?

To quote Rupaul,“If you don’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”. Amen!